After reflecting on the video and reading

What makes a question essential: (pages 107-112 in UbD text.) 4 connotations of “essential”

 Important questions that recur throughout our lives

 Core ideas and inquiries within the discipline

 Helps students effectively inquire and make sense of the big idea(s) and requires students to make decisions about answers

 Engages a specific and diverse set of learners Characteristics of Essential Questions (also p. 91 in UbD workbook)

 Have more than 1 answer, meant to be discussed, investigated

 Cannot be answered in a single sentence

 Might be controversial or pose a dilemma and as such require reasoning and justification

 Raise other important questions

 Naturally and appropriately recur K-12 and beyond

SIX FACETS OF UNDERSTANDING Six Facets Description Example

Explanation To ensure students understand why an answer or approach is the right one. Students explain or justify their responses or justify their course of action.

Students develop an illustrated brochure to explain the principles and practices of a particular type of technology (i.e., transportation, construction, medical, information).

Interpretation To ensure students avoid the pitfall of looking for the “right answer” and demand answers that are principled…students are able to encompass as many salient facts and points of view as possible.

Students develop a ‘biography’ of the development of a particular type of technology.

Application

To ensure students’ key performances are conscious and explicit reflection, self-assessment, and self-adjustment, with reasoning made evident. Authentic assessment requires a real or simulated audience, purpose, setting, and options for personalizing the work, realistic constraints, and “background noise.”

Students analyze a design of a product, taking it apart in order to determine how it works.

Students design, develop, test, and revise a solution to a local issue, such as a new roadway system, a water treatment system, or long-term storage of various materials.

Perspective

To ensure students know the importance or significance of an idea and to grasp its importance or unimportance. Encourage students to step back and ask, “What of it?” “Of what value is this knowledge?” “How important is this idea?” “What does this idea enable us to do that is important?”

Students investigate about a technological artifact from the perspective of different regions and countries.

Empathy To ensure students develop the ability to see the world from different viewpoints in order to understand the diversity of thought and feeling in the world.

Students imagine they are politicians debating the value of nuclear power. They write their thoughts and feelings explaining why they agree or disagree with the use of nuclear power.

Self- Knowledge

To ensure students are deeply aware of the boundaries of their own and others’ understanding; able to recognize their own prejudices and projections; has integrity – able and willing to act on what one understands

Students reflect on their own progress of understanding about one of the standards in Standards for Technological Literacy: Content for the Study of Technology. They evaluate the extent to which they have improved, what task or assignment was the most challenging and why, and which project or product of work they are most proud of and why.

Source: Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (1998). Understanding by Design. p. 85-97. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Handout #9